Back when the Papacy actually had lands other than a tiny little piece of Rome, that is. Would you say they were better or worse, overall, than the typical emperor or king of the day in caring for their subjects, keeping the peace, seeing that justice was done, etc.?
Not really a meaningful question. There was more variation between individual popes than between the papacy and secular rulers. I don’t know how one would “average” it over time; I’d probably give the Popes a bit of an edge but that’s just my love for big hats and campy outfits.
Well, it was Macaulay who made that pronouncement most famously, so he being wholly unreliable, one might consider it just hyperbole: however others had been making much the same complaint for centuries, from Alfonso de Valdés, after the Sack of Rome — but he was Chancellor to Charles V who was partly responsible for that Sack — to Mazzini, who wanted Rome for himself. Generally, one might say these condemnations were slightly politically self-serving, but I could imagine that if Luther hadn’t visited Rome, someone else may have kick-started the Reformation. It was that bad.
In Rome itself there was lingering aristocratic hooliganism and churchly politics; out in the country there were many bandits. Generally, whilst the States were vital to the Pope as both revenue and as a ‘nation’ to enable power-play status, he could not care for them as a ruler might, since running the Church alone is difficult enough even without the diplomatic balancing the Church also demands. Besides which, he was only elected, and had no hereditary ties that either a monarch or a local governing body might be expected to have to the land and people. Until Pio Nono, the States were if not at all times the worst, certainly the most backward and least cared for in Italy alone.
This without looking at the curious doctrines held by the Church, ‘Suffering Ennobles’, ‘Donating Money Clears The Way To Salvation’, ‘The Holy Father Rules All Kings And Peoples’, etc. etc. that would not tend to easing the life of the average peasant.